Revolutionary breakthrough: The catalyst transforms motor oil, plastic and natural gas into sustainable materials

28-Feb-2023

Researchers created a new catalyst that transforms hydrocarbons into chemicals and materials that are higher value, easier to recycle, and biodegrade in the environment. This catalyst transforms materials such as motor oil, plastics in single-use grocery bags, water or milk bottles, and their ...

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Andrea Hochegger, an analytical chemist at TU Graz, investigates whether foodstuffs can be tainted with harmful substances from packaging or during production

27-Sep-2022

Andrea Hochegger’s current research focus is the question of contamination with mineral oil hydrocarbons. “We break up complex mixtures into MOSH and MOAH fractions,” Andrea explains. These are groups of chemical compounds found in mineral oil. MOSH stands for mineral oil saturated hydrocarbons ...

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08-Sep-2022

Transition metal oxides are a kind of catalysts for oxidative dehydrogenation of alkanes. However,they suffer from inferior alkenes yield due to the trade-off between conversion and selectivity induced by more reactive alkenes than alkanes. Recently, a research group led by Prof. WANG Xiaodong ...

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Polymer-based membranes that selectively separate hydrocarbon and crude oil mixtures could eclipse current industrial thermal processes

01-Sep-2022

Polymer-based membranes developed at KAUST could enable greener and cheaper industrial separation approaches. Their stability and selectivity can be tuned by thermal crosslinking to separate simple hydrocarbon mixtures and complex crude oil fractions. Separation processes, such as distillation ...

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30-Aug-2022

High-efficiency utilization of CO2 facilitates the reduction of CO2 concentration in the global atmosphere and hence the alleviation of the greenhouse effect. The chemical utilization of CO2, which refers to converting CO2 into value-added chemicals and liquid fuels, has a distinct and direct CO2 ...

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26-Jul-2022

Emissions of greenhouse gases contribute significantly to global warming. Not only carbon dioxide (CO2) but also fluorine-containing gases – including so-called per- or polyfluorinated hydrocarbons, or PFCs – have a significant share in this development. Researchers at the Institute of Organic ...

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International team reports on highly oxidized hydrotrioxides

31-May-2022

An international research team has now succeeded in detecting hydrotrioxides (ROOOH) for the first time under atmospheric conditions. Until now, there was only speculation that these organic compounds with the unusual OOOH group exist. In laboratory experiments, their formation during the ...

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Investigating the harsh environment of interstellar space in a FLASH

21-Feb-2022

Using DESY's free-electron laser FLASH, scientists have recreated some of the harsh environment of interstellar space in the lab and analysed the reaction of astrochemical molecules to these conditions. The results show a comprehensive picture of the dynamics of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons ...

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Several layers of nanographenes stacked on top of each other: such functional elements could one day be used in solar cells

09-Feb-2022

Graphene is a carbon material that forms extremely thin layers. Because of its unusual properties, it is interesting for many technical applications. This also applies to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which can be regarded as cut-outs of graphene. They are considered promising ...

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A special microbe turns oil into gases all by itself

03-Jan-2022

Microorganisms can convert oil into natural gas, i.e. methane. Until recently, it was thought that this conversion was only possible through the cooperation of different organisms. In 2019, Rafael Laso-Pérez and Gunter Wegener from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology suggested that a ...

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